Accounting, business and technology insights for those who are blazing their own trail to success.

Top Tips for Marketing to SOHO Owners

SOHO (Small Office Home Office) business owners now number in the millions in North America. As their name suggests, these micro-business owners are freelancers, solo practitioners, or employ 1-20 people at most. A SOHO or business is not necessarily “small” just because the number of employees is small. There are many businesses—especially online businesses—that have a small number of employees yet have a national or global market of tens of thousands or even millions. Kashoo Small Business Accounting is one of those very successful online businesses with less than 20 employees yet it has a very large and very satisfied global customer base.

There are lots of different “micro-markets”, and it is very helpful to you to know how to market to them, depending on your product or service offerings. Before just copying what others are doing, you will find more success if you design your marketing campaigns based on the strengths of your business. How large (or small) is your client base? Is there a high demand for what you provide? Should there be?

What sets you and your business apart for everyone else out there? If you have perfected your unique selling proposition statement and your elevator pitch, then you already instinctively know how you are different, better, more targeted, etc. for a specific micro-market.

One important thing to remember when designing your marketing campaign for this group of business owners is that, for the most part, they are thinking as “business owners” and as “consumers”. Think like an individual who is also in business when developing relationships with SOHO owners and small businesses.

One of the other very important things to remember is that freelancers, SOHO owners, and micro-businesses are NOT “smaller big businesses”. What works for big enterprises generally is not appropriate for the micro-business market. We want and need more attention from customer service (we are usually our own "IT guys"), affordable pricing small business = small budgets), and products and services designed especially for us. We may not be big, but there are millions and millions of us, and we will become very loyal to you when you partner with us for our success.